Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

EDITORIAL:

Jan. 6 investigation, and reaction to it, holds a mirror up to U.S. society

trump

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

A video showing former White House Advisor Ivanka Trump speaking during an interview with the Jan. 6th Committee is shown as committee members from left to right, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., look on, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its first public hearing to reveal the findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 9, 2022.

The expectations ran high last night as the Jan. 6 Committee took to television to deliver its opening arguments in prime time.

Prior to the hearings, the bipartisan committee investigating the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol promised to deliver a coherent narrative that tied deliberate actions of President Donald Trump and his associates to the unlawful violence and interference with the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The committee members delivered a compelling opening, complete with a timeline of events that led up to the violence and its aftermath.

They also revealed previously unseen footage of the attack on the Capitol and shared clips of depositions showing that Attorney General Bill Barr, White House senior adviser Ivanka Trump, Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan, and another Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon all told the president that he had lost the election and that there was no credible evidence of widespread election fraud.

That bears repeating so it sinks in: Critical members of Trump’s inner circle, including his own daughter and his loyal attorney general, all testified that there was no fraud. Trump was told he had certainly lost, yet still tried to steal a free and fair election. Meanwhile, his fellow plotters understood their criminal acts so well that they begged Trump for presidential pardons.

With that evidence in place, we now owe the committee our attention as it lays out the rest of its case.

History has shown us that congressional hearings are a form of political theater that have the power to capture the public’s imagination. Televised hearings provide the opportunity to take nuanced political and legal questions and make them more approachable and comprehensible to the public. This, in turn, can drive movements for change that lead to landmark reforms. In one case, a congressional hearing even ended a presidency.

But more recent congressional hearings such as the 2012 hearings on Benghazi, Libya, or Robert Mueller’s 2019 testimony about Trump’s involvement with Russia, have fallen flat. In those instances, the hearings accomplished little more than delivering a whiff of cable news content to an already exhausted public who, at best, wanted more concrete conclusions, and at worst, were simply looking to be entertained.

Apparently, the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee are among this “at worst” category and expected a more fun, entertaining and light-hearted presentation on deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol. Using their official Twitter account, the Republican committee members tweeted “This production is BORING” and dismissed the importance of transparency and sharing previously unseen materials with the public by saying “All. Old. News.”

Although we disagree with those GOP members and found last night’s hearings engrossing, we should not fall into the familiar trap of treating the hearing as just another form of theater or amusement. Nor should we believe that these hearings are the same as those from the past. Always remember that this is a hearing about a plot to steal the presidency.

In the 500-plus days since the insurrection, too many of us have become numb to the constant punditry and drip of “breaking news” on the topic. Polling shows that between 70% and 80% of Americans have already made up their minds about whether Trump is responsible for the insurrection. What we don’t know from the polling is the number of people who have stopped caring and tuned out the issue to avoid the partisan noise surrounding it.

But the committee chose to hold the first hearing in prime time, not because it was must-see TV entertainment, but because it was must-see information for a public desperately in need of a shared narrative and set of facts around Jan. 6. Historians may one day look back upon Jan. 6 as the end of the great American experiment or the beginning of a new and renewed United States of America that steadfastly repelled the forces of fascism and authoritarianism which had gained a foothold in its camp.

Audio and video recordings from that day show members of Congress elected by the American people to represent our communities and our country running in fear for their lives. The committee heard testimony from a Capitol police officer who was injured in the riots and feared for her future.

Their fear was not imagined or inflated. An armed mob was, for the first time in American history, violently attempting to prevent the transfer of presidential power at the urging of a sitting president determined to stay in office no matter the cost.

By the end of the coup attempt, two police officers and a United States Air Force veteran were dead. Several more police officers took their own lives in subsequent days and weeks.

Taxpayers are paying for repairs to the Capitol and upgraded security measures to control the mob-like elements in our citizenry, but the halls of the Capitol will never be truly free again.

These hearings are not just about who knew what at a single event on a single day in Washington, D.C. They are about who we are and who we want to be as a nation.

Whether Trump knowingly worked with violent white supremacists like the Proud Boys to knowingly plan an armed assault on the Capitol is important, but it will not heal our wounds or solve the rot at the heart of our country.

To heal our festering wounds, we need to stop violent extremists from controlling even more levers of democracy than they already do. Then, we need to understand the circumstances and conditions that have led to one of our two major political parties plummeting toward fascism and what the rest of us can do to help solve the crisis at our doorsteps.

This will require not only an investigation into Jan. 6 but an investigation into the heart and soul of American identity: who we are as a people, what we believe, and how we see and treat each other. We will not like what we find staring back at us, but we must confront it head on.

The American people deserve to know the truth of the entire story of what happened Jan. 6, how we got here, and what is likely to happen if we remain on this course moving forward. But we will only learn the truth if we choose to tune in, pay attention, vote and engage in difficult conversations with each other, and with ourselves.